Michael Curnes
■ Ventures and Strategy
I believe in being ever curious when I encounter something and adaptable enough to turn imperfect findings into something useful.
I believe in being ever curious when I encounter something and adaptable enough to turn imperfect findings into something useful.
I believe in being ever curious when I encounter something and adaptable enough to turn imperfect findings into something useful.
Because if you aren’t looking, how can you grow? And if you aren’t creating, what exactly are you changing?
Get in touch
■ HOW DO I HELP?
I’ve always cared more about why something is true than about being right.
That usually means looking past the first explanation. Most things make sense at a distance. The interesting part starts when you get close enough to notice the contradictions, the assumptions nobody remembers making, or the piece of evidence that does not fit the story everyone else has accepted.
I am naturally drawn to these gaps.
I want to know why a founder sees a problem differently than everyone else. Why a business keeps doing something long after the original reason has disappeared. Why one product feels inevitable while another, almost identical one, never earns attention. Why people value what they value. Why an idea works in one context and fails completely in another.
I do not think curiosity is particularly useful if it ends with collecting information.
The harder part is deciding what to do with what you find.
Most evidence is incomplete. People are contradictory. Markets are noisy. Good ideas arrive mixed with bad assumptions. There is rarely a clean moment where all of the information suddenly agrees.
I focus on honing a sense of adaptation that is enough to consistently find a way to have the imperfect coalesce into something that feels like it should of always been that way.
Find the pattern. Test the explanation. Change the frame when the old one stops holding up. Build something coherent enough to act on, while remaining willing to dismantle it when better evidence appears.
That instinct follows me everywhere.
Work gives it boundaries. Outside of work, it does not have many.
A business model, a city, a restaurant, a piece of clothing, a cultural habit, a market, a historical argument, or an obscure question I probably had no practical reason to investigate can all become interesting for essentially the same reason:
There is usually more going on than the first explanation allows.
I think it is worth looking.
Expand
Michael Curnes
Founder operator and advisor
■ FIELD NOTES
Field notes on consumer anthropology, food, culture, business, and more
Field notes on consumer anthropology, food, culture, business, and more
Field notes on consumer anthropology, food, culture, business, and more
Field-Note-001
When does seeing something become noticing?
It is amazing how much information we absorb without consciously examining it. The mere-exposure effect describes how repeated encounters can increase familiarity even without deliberate attention. A familiar view out the window can suddenly reveal a detail that was always there. Buyers behave similarly. A company, product, or idea can remain visible without ever being seriously considered until repeated exposure gives it enough presence to merit thought. Familiarity alone does not create action, but it can create attention.
Expand
Field-Note-003
When does something ordinary start becoming more?
Discretionary purchases are interesting because they have a unique ability to transform. Some are simply things that serve a purpose and serve it well. Others become more than a hammer for a nail. They can become symbols of affiliation, status, or subtle components of identity. Watching that transformation can resemble watching a rainstorm: a drizzle becomes steady rain, the rain becomes a downpour, and then, just like a storm, it vanishes.
Expand
Field-Note-005
How do people interpret others symbolically but themselves pragmatically?
We are often quick to notice what other people’s choices might mean. A watch can suggest status. A car can suggest ambition. A jacket can suggest belonging. Our own choices, of course, usually feel more practical. We know the context behind them. That difference is worth noticing. People experience our choices from the outside, just as we experience theirs. Whether we intend it or not, the things we choose are always saying something.
Expand
Field-Note-007
Is taste primarily a money problem, an awareness problem, or a search problem?
Taste is easy to confuse with spending power. They are not the same thing. Money can expand the field of options, but it does not decide what deserves attention. Often, the more interesting question is where someone has learned to look. A small restaurant with no publicity. An old jacket that keeps getting better. An object that simply feels right. Taste grows through attention, curiosity, and the willingness to keep looking.
Expand
Field-Note-009
When does a product become a story rather than a feature set?
A product becomes more than a feature set when people can place part of themselves inside it. A bracelet can hold memory. A jacket can signal belonging. A familiar object can carry protection, romance, rebellion, or proof of a chapter lived. Features explain usefulness. Story creates meaning. The strongest products often do both, giving people a reason to choose them and a reason to care when they are gone.
Expand
Field-Note-011
When is a roadmap operational, and when is it narrative infrastructure?
A roadmap is more than a calendar. It is an argument about sequence. It shows what comes first, what depends on what, and where evidence needs to appear before the next commitment is made. A list of wishes with dates attached does not create much confidence. A thoughtful sequence can. The future remains uncertain, but the roadmap gives others a way to understand how the team is thinking about it.
Expand
Field-Note-013
Is perception management a core founder task equal to product development?
Perception is easy to dismiss as decoration, especially when the product is still taking shape. But early on, trust often arrives before certainty. Customers, investors, hires, and partners are evaluating what exists today and what they believe the team can make true tomorrow. That does not require hype. It requires clarity, consistency, and the ability to make a credible promise before every answer is known. In early-stage work, shaping that belief is part of the job.
Expand
Field-Note-015
When is being solo a weakness, and when is it a signal of force?
Being a solo founder is not automatically a weakness. The larger question is whether the work shows focus. One person can create confidence through cadence, judgment, discipline, and visible progress. A small team can be an advantage when decisions stay clear and momentum remains visible. The challenge is not size by itself. It is whether the business becomes easier to understand and more credible with each step forward.
Expand
Field-Note-017
How often is “better execution” actually better temporal positioning?
Better execution is not always better skill. Sometimes it is better timing. Two firms can see the same market and reach different conclusions because they are working on different clocks. One sees danger. Another sees a temporary spread. One sees noise. Another sees a signal that matters six months from now. Advantage often comes from matching the right horizon to the right opportunity.
Expand
Field-Note-019
Is novelty often just recomposed memory?
Much of what feels new is familiar material placed in a better frame. Strong lifestyle brands understand this. The customer does not always want to be shocked. Often, they want recognition with a little distance from the original. A color, silhouette, ritual, or memory returns with a different context and suddenly feels current again. Novelty often begins with knowing what deserves to be remembered.
Expand
Field-Note-021
Which food trends are aesthetic, operational, economic, or identity-driven?
Food trends are rarely only about taste. A new café format, regional dish, wine bar, bakery, chef persona, or night-market hybrid can reveal changes in rent, tourism, labor, class, design, and aspiration. Restaurants give those forces a physical address. They are places where economics becomes visible, culture gets tested, and changing identities sit down at the same table.
Expand
Field-Note-023
What forms of discipline do founders accept without feeling constrained?
Founders rarely need less energy. They need containers that help energy travel farther. Vision, speed, charisma, and obsession can create momentum, but they can also create noise when nothing gives them sequence. Good support turns energy into cadence: clearer priorities, sharper GTM decisions, better milestones, and more useful updates. The challenge is to add structure without removing the sense of ownership that made the founder effective in the first place.
Expand
Field-Note-025
Is practicality sometimes a shield against desire?
Practicality is often real. It can also protect us from naming what we want. A budget, schedule, or constraint may be completely valid while still sitting beside aspiration. People can know what they can justify and still imagine something beyond it. Markets often form in that tension, between the life someone can explain today and the life they are beginning to picture.
Expand
Field-Note-002
When is it better to have a smaller audience?
For individuals or small organizations, reaching a large audience can create visibility, but that visibility can quickly dissolve into background noise. A smaller group that finds the message relevant, encounters it repeatedly, and has referral power can create value. The message lands in context, appears often enough to become familiar, and can travel naturally into conversations where it is relevant. Finding 50 people who will listen matters more than reaching 1,000 who will only see.
Expand
Field-Note-004
Really? Another hurdle?
A sales cycle asks a buyer to repeatedly justify continuing. Every objection, approval, implementation concern, or procurement step creates another chance to reconsider the destination. The answer can’t always be another monetary concession. Better progress creates incentive by making each hurdle produce something useful: greater clarity, less uncertainty, stronger evidence, or increased confidence in the outcome. Every jump requires energy, and no one wants to arrive at the finish line too exhausted to enjoy what they came for.
Expand
Field-Note-006
How much of taste is suppressed by money, time, access, or awareness?
People sometimes say they do not care about taste. That may be true. But sometimes the real issue is access. No one showed them where to look, what to notice, or how to explore without feeling out of place. Preference can stay quiet when time is short, money is tight, or the search feels intimidating. Give people better access, better language, and permission to explore, and taste often begins to reveal itself.
Expand
Field-Note-008
How does customer identity precede acquisition strategy?
Before acquisition, there is recognition. People want to see some version of themselves in what they choose. A customer may be buying coffee, software, jewelry, clothing, or advice, but the purchase often carries a second question: does this fit the person I am becoming? Funnels matter. Distribution matters. But they work better when the person comes first. Understand who they want to become, then make the path toward that identity easier to recognize.
Expand
Field-Note-010
What execution signals matter more than technical expertise in investor evaluation?
Investors cannot always evaluate every part of the engine directly. So they look for signals around it. Does the team ship? Does it learn? Does it follow through? Can it turn uncertainty into a next step? Do customer conversations improve the work? Perfection is rarely the signal. Progress with judgment is. Confidence grows when people can see that the founder makes the business clearer, more focused, and more real over time.
Expand
Field-Note-012
How personal should a founder narrative be before it stops scaling?
A founder’s personal story can be powerful, but only when it helps other people see the problem more clearly. The story is not the product. It is a lens. Pain, history, taste, and obsession matter when they explain why the founder notices something others have missed. A biography tells us what happened. A useful founder narrative tells us what that experience made possible to see. That is where a personal story begins to scale.
Expand
Field-Note-014
How much investor confidence is created by market logic rather than product proof?
Proof matters, but proof becomes more convincing when people understand the logic around it. A prototype, a few customers, or early traction can show that something is working. Market logic helps explain whether it can keep working. Why this buyer? Why now? Why this entry point? Why this team? Those questions connect evidence to possibility. They help turn isolated wins into a story about where the business can go next.
Expand
Field-Note-016
Which services are credible enough to price on outcomes?
Outcome-based pricing changes the relationship. The conversation moves away from hours, meetings, and activity toward a simpler question: what changed? That can create alignment, but only when the work allows it. The seller needs enough control to influence the result, enough measurement to prove it, and enough trust to survive ambiguity. Otherwise, every invoice becomes a negotiation. Outcome pricing works best when both sides can name victory before the work begins.
Expand
Field-Note-018
How does tradition stay alive without becoming a costume?
Tradition stays alive when people can still use it. The challenge is not to preserve every detail exactly as it was, nor to discard the past in pursuit of novelty. It is to understand the code beneath the surface. A jacket, chair, room, logo, or ritual can carry inheritance without becoming a museum piece. Good reinterpretation keeps the memory intact while giving it somewhere new to go.
Expand
Field-Note-020
When does a local fashion brand become a city symbol?
A local object becomes a city symbol when people use it to recognize one another. A tote bag, cap, jacket, or restaurant shirt can become a small passport for belonging. The brand succeeds because it gives form to a feeling that already existed. It does not invent the city’s identity. It makes that identity visible enough to carry in public.
Expand
Field-Note-022
What does a guest buy besides the meal?
A guest buys more than dinner. They also buy atmosphere, privacy, romance, rhythm, recognition, and sometimes a temporary version of themselves. The food matters, but the room begins speaking before the first plate arrives. Every restaurant quietly answers a question for the guest: who can I be here? The best ones make the answer feel natural.
Expand
Field-Note-024
How much reasoning is post-purchase narrative?
The reasons people give for a purchase are not always the reasons that started it. Utility may be part of the story, but belonging, status, control, identity, or desire can arrive earlier and speak more quietly. Later, the rational mind finds language that sounds respectable. That does not make the customer dishonest. It makes buying human. Good strategy listens to both explanations.
Expand
Field-Note-001
When does seeing something become noticing?
It is amazing how much information we absorb without consciously examining it. The mere-exposure effect describes how repeated encounters can increase familiarity even without deliberate attention. A familiar view out the window can suddenly reveal a detail that was always there. Buyers behave similarly. A company, product, or idea can remain visible without ever being seriously considered until repeated exposure gives it enough presence to merit thought. Familiarity alone does not create action, but it can create attention.
Expand
Field-Note-002
When is it better to have a smaller audience?
For individuals or small organizations, reaching a large audience can create visibility, but that visibility can quickly dissolve into background noise. A smaller group that finds the message relevant, encounters it repeatedly, and has referral power can create value. The message lands in context, appears often enough to become familiar, and can travel naturally into conversations where it is relevant. Finding 50 people who will listen matters more than reaching 1,000 who will only see.
Expand
Field-Note-003
When does something ordinary start becoming more?
Discretionary purchases are interesting because they have a unique ability to transform. Some are simply things that serve a purpose and serve it well. Others become more than a hammer for a nail. They can become symbols of affiliation, status, or subtle components of identity. Watching that transformation can resemble watching a rainstorm: a drizzle becomes steady rain, the rain becomes a downpour, and then, just like a storm, it vanishes.
Expand
Field-Note-004
Really? Another hurdle?
A sales cycle asks a buyer to repeatedly justify continuing. Every objection, approval, implementation concern, or procurement step creates another chance to reconsider the destination. The answer can’t always be another monetary concession. Better progress creates incentive by making each hurdle produce something useful: greater clarity, less uncertainty, stronger evidence, or increased confidence in the outcome. Every jump requires energy, and no one wants to arrive at the finish line too exhausted to enjoy what they came for.
Expand
Field-Note-005
How do people interpret others symbolically but themselves pragmatically?
We are often quick to notice what other people’s choices might mean. A watch can suggest status. A car can suggest ambition. A jacket can suggest belonging. Our own choices, of course, usually feel more practical. We know the context behind them. That difference is worth noticing. People experience our choices from the outside, just as we experience theirs. Whether we intend it or not, the things we choose are always saying something.
Expand
Field-Note-006
How much of taste is suppressed by money, time, access, or awareness?
People sometimes say they do not care about taste. That may be true. But sometimes the real issue is access. No one showed them where to look, what to notice, or how to explore without feeling out of place. Preference can stay quiet when time is short, money is tight, or the search feels intimidating. Give people better access, better language, and permission to explore, and taste often begins to reveal itself.
Expand
Field-Note-007
Is taste primarily a money problem, an awareness problem, or a search problem?
Taste is easy to confuse with spending power. They are not the same thing. Money can expand the field of options, but it does not decide what deserves attention. Often, the more interesting question is where someone has learned to look. A small restaurant with no publicity. An old jacket that keeps getting better. An object that simply feels right. Taste grows through attention, curiosity, and the willingness to keep looking.
Expand
Field-Note-008
How does customer identity precede acquisition strategy?
Before acquisition, there is recognition. People want to see some version of themselves in what they choose. A customer may be buying coffee, software, jewelry, clothing, or advice, but the purchase often carries a second question: does this fit the person I am becoming? Funnels matter. Distribution matters. But they work better when the person comes first. Understand who they want to become, then make the path toward that identity easier to recognize.
Expand
Field-Note-009
When does a product become a story rather than a feature set?
A product becomes more than a feature set when people can place part of themselves inside it. A bracelet can hold memory. A jacket can signal belonging. A familiar object can carry protection, romance, rebellion, or proof of a chapter lived. Features explain usefulness. Story creates meaning. The strongest products often do both, giving people a reason to choose them and a reason to care when they are gone.
Expand
Field-Note-010
What execution signals matter more than technical expertise in investor evaluation?
Investors cannot always evaluate every part of the engine directly. So they look for signals around it. Does the team ship? Does it learn? Does it follow through? Can it turn uncertainty into a next step? Do customer conversations improve the work? Perfection is rarely the signal. Progress with judgment is. Confidence grows when people can see that the founder makes the business clearer, more focused, and more real over time.
Expand
Field-Note-011
When is a roadmap operational, and when is it narrative infrastructure?
A roadmap is more than a calendar. It is an argument about sequence. It shows what comes first, what depends on what, and where evidence needs to appear before the next commitment is made. A list of wishes with dates attached does not create much confidence. A thoughtful sequence can. The future remains uncertain, but the roadmap gives others a way to understand how the team is thinking about it.
Expand
Field-Note-012
How personal should a founder narrative be before it stops scaling?
A founder’s personal story can be powerful, but only when it helps other people see the problem more clearly. The story is not the product. It is a lens. Pain, history, taste, and obsession matter when they explain why the founder notices something others have missed. A biography tells us what happened. A useful founder narrative tells us what that experience made possible to see. That is where a personal story begins to scale.
Expand
Field-Note-013
Is perception management a core founder task equal to product development?
Perception is easy to dismiss as decoration, especially when the product is still taking shape. But early on, trust often arrives before certainty. Customers, investors, hires, and partners are evaluating what exists today and what they believe the team can make true tomorrow. That does not require hype. It requires clarity, consistency, and the ability to make a credible promise before every answer is known. In early-stage work, shaping that belief is part of the job.
Expand
Field-Note-014
How much investor confidence is created by market logic rather than product proof?
Proof matters, but proof becomes more convincing when people understand the logic around it. A prototype, a few customers, or early traction can show that something is working. Market logic helps explain whether it can keep working. Why this buyer? Why now? Why this entry point? Why this team? Those questions connect evidence to possibility. They help turn isolated wins into a story about where the business can go next.
Expand
Field-Note-015
When is being solo a weakness, and when is it a signal of force?
Being a solo founder is not automatically a weakness. The larger question is whether the work shows focus. One person can create confidence through cadence, judgment, discipline, and visible progress. A small team can be an advantage when decisions stay clear and momentum remains visible. The challenge is not size by itself. It is whether the business becomes easier to understand and more credible with each step forward.
Expand
Field-Note-016
Which services are credible enough to price on outcomes?
Outcome-based pricing changes the relationship. The conversation moves away from hours, meetings, and activity toward a simpler question: what changed? That can create alignment, but only when the work allows it. The seller needs enough control to influence the result, enough measurement to prove it, and enough trust to survive ambiguity. Otherwise, every invoice becomes a negotiation. Outcome pricing works best when both sides can name victory before the work begins.
Expand
Field-Note-017
How often is “better execution” actually better temporal positioning?
Better execution is not always better skill. Sometimes it is better timing. Two firms can see the same market and reach different conclusions because they are working on different clocks. One sees danger. Another sees a temporary spread. One sees noise. Another sees a signal that matters six months from now. Advantage often comes from matching the right horizon to the right opportunity.
Expand
Field-Note-018
How does tradition stay alive without becoming a costume?
Tradition stays alive when people can still use it. The challenge is not to preserve every detail exactly as it was, nor to discard the past in pursuit of novelty. It is to understand the code beneath the surface. A jacket, chair, room, logo, or ritual can carry inheritance without becoming a museum piece. Good reinterpretation keeps the memory intact while giving it somewhere new to go.
Expand
Field-Note-019
Is novelty often just recomposed memory?
Much of what feels new is familiar material placed in a better frame. Strong lifestyle brands understand this. The customer does not always want to be shocked. Often, they want recognition with a little distance from the original. A color, silhouette, ritual, or memory returns with a different context and suddenly feels current again. Novelty often begins with knowing what deserves to be remembered.
Expand
Field-Note-020
When does a local fashion brand become a city symbol?
A local object becomes a city symbol when people use it to recognize one another. A tote bag, cap, jacket, or restaurant shirt can become a small passport for belonging. The brand succeeds because it gives form to a feeling that already existed. It does not invent the city’s identity. It makes that identity visible enough to carry in public.
Expand
Field-Note-021
Which food trends are aesthetic, operational, economic, or identity-driven?
Food trends are rarely only about taste. A new café format, regional dish, wine bar, bakery, chef persona, or night-market hybrid can reveal changes in rent, tourism, labor, class, design, and aspiration. Restaurants give those forces a physical address. They are places where economics becomes visible, culture gets tested, and changing identities sit down at the same table.
Expand
Field-Note-022
What does a guest buy besides the meal?
A guest buys more than dinner. They also buy atmosphere, privacy, romance, rhythm, recognition, and sometimes a temporary version of themselves. The food matters, but the room begins speaking before the first plate arrives. Every restaurant quietly answers a question for the guest: who can I be here? The best ones make the answer feel natural.
Expand
Field-Note-023
What forms of discipline do founders accept without feeling constrained?
Founders rarely need less energy. They need containers that help energy travel farther. Vision, speed, charisma, and obsession can create momentum, but they can also create noise when nothing gives them sequence. Good support turns energy into cadence: clearer priorities, sharper GTM decisions, better milestones, and more useful updates. The challenge is to add structure without removing the sense of ownership that made the founder effective in the first place.
Expand
Field-Note-024
How much reasoning is post-purchase narrative?
The reasons people give for a purchase are not always the reasons that started it. Utility may be part of the story, but belonging, status, control, identity, or desire can arrive earlier and speak more quietly. Later, the rational mind finds language that sounds respectable. That does not make the customer dishonest. It makes buying human. Good strategy listens to both explanations.
Expand
Field-Note-025
Is practicality sometimes a shield against desire?
Practicality is often real. It can also protect us from naming what we want. A budget, schedule, or constraint may be completely valid while still sitting beside aspiration. People can know what they can justify and still imagine something beyond it. Markets often form in that tension, between the life someone can explain today and the life they are beginning to picture.
Expand
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■ PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Experiences and Reflections
Experiences and Reflections
Experiences and Reflections
Selected stories about commercial strategy, venture evaluation, operating constraints, and the questions that changed the work.
Selected stories about commercial strategy, venture evaluation, operating constraints, and the questions that changed the work.
001
Changing the Narrative
Changing the Narrative
Changing the Narrative
Commercial Strategy & RFP Reframing
Commercial Strategy & RFP Reframing
002
Before the Numbers Could Tell the Story
Before the Numbers Could Tell the Story
Before the Numbers Could Tell the Story
Growth Officer & Embedded Strategy Consultant
Growth Officer & Embedded Strategy Consultant
003
Show Me What You Saw
Show Me What You Saw
Show Me What You Saw
Venture Associate & Startup Competition Judge
Venture Associate & Startup Competition Judge
004
Swimming Alone
Swimming Alone
Swimming Alone
Founder & Operator, Lokal LLC · Sept 2019 – Jan 2021
Founder & Operator, Lokal LLC · Sept 2019 – Jan 2021
005
The Value in the Room
The Value in the Room
The Value in the Room
Business Development & Commercial Strategy
Business Development & Commercial Strategy
■ MY FOUNDATIONS
What expertise do I bring?
What expertise do I bring?
What expertise do I bring?
As a growth lead
As a growth lead
I've built go-to-market strategies, positioning, and revenue paths for companies from pre-seed startups to public-sector vendors, then executed on them.
As a business development & strategic partnerships facilitator
As a business development & strategic partnerships facilitator
I've won contracts, structured deals, and moved decisions forward by finding the real reason a prospect said no and building the case that changes it.
As a strategy consultant
As a strategy consultant
Companies bring me a plan that already sounds finished, and I find out what it's still resting on before a client, an investor, or a board acts on it.
■ START THE CONVERSATION
I'm ready when you are
I'm ready when you are
I’d love to connect and learn more about you. Send me an email, and we’ll find a time that works to talk.
I’d love to connect and learn more about you. Send me an email, and we’ll find a time that works to talk.